How JOUAV Mapped 13,000 km2 of Rugged Forest in 60 Days？

Chongqing's Qinba Mountains are basically a giant green wall protecting the region. But there's a problem - pine wood nematodes are eating through it. Fast.

The forestry department needed to find every infected cluster across 13,000 square kilometers of dense, mountainous terrain. That's bigger than Qatar. And if you've ever tried to hike through the Qinba range, you know ground patrols would take years. Maybe decades.

So they called us.

Why This Couldn't Be a Normal Drone Job

Here's the thing about the Qinba Mountains - they're shaped like "two mountains squeezing a river." One minute you're at 300 meters of elevation. Next, you're at 1,000. That vertical mess creates two headaches:

First, there's nowhere flat to land. Normal fixed-wing drones need runways or catapults. In Qinba, your only "runway" options are narrow ridges or forest trails. Good luck.

Second, the weather is straight-up unpredictable. A local saying goes something like "ten feet higher, different weather" - and they're not kidding. Fog rolls in out of nowhere. Mountain winds kick up to 12 m/s without warning. Whatever drone you fly needs to handle its most vulnerable moments - takeoff and landing - in conditions that change by the minute.

That's why we went with our CW Series drones. They take off like helicopters, fly like planes, and don't need a runway to come home.

CW-15 flying over mountainous terrain.

How We Actually Pulled it off

Mapping 13,000 km² in two months isn't a flying problem. It's a logistics problem.

We broke it into grids across five counties: Chengkou, Wuxi, Wushan, Fengjie, and Yunyang. Our customer service center's technical service department coordinated more than ten JOUAV CW Series VTOL fixed-wing drones—each one assigned to a small, mobile team. No massive central launch site. Just teams scattered across the region, launching from ridges and forest clearings.

Operation area map (five counties: Chengkou, Wuxi, Wushan, Fengjie, Yunyang)

And crucially, we standardized the data formats from day one. So while one Dapeng was still in the air, the previous mission's images were already being stitched into maps back at base.

Parallel processing. No waiting around.

The "Chase the Sun" Trick

The project ran in the autumn. Which means rain, fog, and plenty of days where nothing flies.

Instead of sitting on our hands, we watched weather models across all five counties like day traders watch stock tickers. Fogged in at Chengkou? Clear window at Fengjie? Pack up and move.

Sometimes we only have two-hour windows. But two hours of flying beats zero hours of waiting. We called it "chasing the sun" - dumb name, but it worked.

And when those mountain winds hit 12 m/s? The CW Series VTOL drones held steady at a 5-7 cm ground sample distance. That's sharp enough for foresters to zoom in and spot a single sick pine tree by its slightly off color.